Richard Levine: Day Labor
Here, morning lines up on corners.
Need brick work done, concrete?
Middle Easterners. That corner. Green market,
restaurant work? Mexicans. There. Poles
do good interior work, but take the Irish
for plumbing and electrical. That corner.
.
This is New York, drinking coffee in plain
blue paper cups at dawn. In every tongue,
the dream begins with showing up. Then,
your kids grow straight American teeth
and attitudes you will want to beat out of them,
but they’ll read and write and never have to stand
on corners at dawn, waiting to be called to do
grunt-work no Americans want to do.
Copyright 2021 Richard Levine
A retired NYC teacher, Richard Levine is the author of Richard Levine: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019).
Right to the point! What “grunt” work is.
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Ah but some of those children are those I had as premed students who want to give back. They have learned persistence and tirelessness and caring from those parents. Immigrants make us rich in many ways.
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